Public health experts say there is a legitimate purpose to statutory rape and incest laws. However, in the context of abortion, these laws are effectively criminalizing normal teen sex and risk compromising patient-confidentiality agreements, as well as potentially deterring patients from seeking sexual health treatment.

When a 13-year-old girl came to Dr. Ulrich Klopfer’s Fort Wayne, Indiana, clinic seeking an abortion in February, the doctor terminated the teenager’s pregnancy, and then—as required by state law—he informed the authorities, he says.

Klopfer said he faxed a report to one of the state agencies he is required to notify in compliance with an Indiana statute that mandates all abortions be reported to the state once every six months.

Now, that report is the subject of a complaint against Klopfer, filed by anti-choice activists who obtained it through a public records request. The document gives no details on the father of the aborted fetus, but does show the date on which the procedure was performed.

“It’s heartbreaking to learn that a 13-year-old became pregnant and now must live with the pain of an abortion for the rest of her life, but it’s doubly heartbreaking that Dr. Klopfer’s failure to report the abortion may have allowed the girl’s molester to walk free,” said Cathie Humbarger, an anti-choice activist and executive director of the Allen Country Right to Life, in a press release.

In fact, there was no indication that the girl had been subject to molestation. Nor was there any suggestion that the abortion was illegal. The complaint was instead based on a requirement of Indiana’s statutory rape notification law that says providers must report abortions performed on minors to the state health and child services departments within three days of the abortion. Humbarger claims that Klopfer waited too long to report the abortion, falling foul of the three-day time limit. Klopfer disputes the allegation, saying he complied with all relevant time limits.

The case could have severe consequences for Dr. Klopfer. In their complaint against him, Humbarger and another anti-choice activist pointed out that Klopfer’s report of the minor’s abortion was marked as being received by the health department in late July, despite the procedure having been performed in February. They have asked the state attorney general’s office to immediately suspend Klopfer’s medical license pending a full investigation.

Klopfer said he complied with the law, though he admitted he did not notify the child services department in addition to the health department, which goes against the statute. The doctor said he expected the departments to communicate with each other. But due to the risks inherent in the mandatory notification laws, he said he now advises minor patients and their parents that they have the option to go to Illinois or Ohio—bordering states—if they want to avoid having their abortions reported. He estimated that up to a third of patients take that option.

Disputes like this are becoming more common as a growing number of states adopt requirements for abortion providers to report all abortions performed on minors as possible cases of rape or incest, even where there is no actual evidence that either of those crimes has occurred. The laws have led to disciplinary actions and, in some cases, clinic closures, according to an analysis of state documents obtained by RH Reality Check as part of our State of Abortion series. In many cases, the disciplinary proceedings are sparked by complaints from anti-choice groups, which are increasingly influential in crafting and passing the laws in the first place, and use them as part of a smear campaign against abortion care by trying to associate abortion with sexual abuse.

Public health experts say there is a legitimate purpose to statutory rape and incest laws: They encourage health-care providers to check for evidence of sexual abuse among young patients. However, in the context of abortion, these laws are effectively criminalizing normal teen sex and risk compromising patient-confidentiality agreements, as well as potentially deterring patients from seeking sexual health treatment, experts told RH Reality Check.

“I think it’s very important that young people who are involved in sexual activity of whatever sort and with whatever age of partner feel free to seek medical attention associated with their sexual activity,” said Abigail English, an adolescent health legal expert and director of the Center for Adolescent Health & the Law in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

English said a particular problem with many of these laws is that they strip away a provider’s discretion to determine whether sexual relationships involving minors are consensual or coercive.

“To the extent that the child abuse reporting laws are structured in a way that discourages that, it’s very unfortunate,” she said.

Experts questioned whether these laws have any significant impact on stopping sexual abuse, but they are certainly having an impact on abortion providers, who are now at greater risk of disciplinary actions and who sometimes face the predicament of sending vulnerable patients out of state to avoid the pitfalls of reporting laws.

A Tangled Web of Laws

Statutory rape laws follow the premise that, under a certain age, individuals cannot consent to sexual activity because they cannot grasp the ramifications of sex. Every state and the District of Columbia address statutory rape through criminal laws and civil reporting laws.

The criminal laws determine at what age an individual can legally consent to sex; mandatory reporting laws determine when sex with a minor of a certain age needs to be reported to law enforcement or child protective services and who must report this sex. In many states, certain professionals, such as doctors and nurses, are designated as “mandatory reporters,” meaning they are obliged to tell authorities when they become aware of certain instances of sex involving a minor.

But most states handle the terms of these laws in different ways. In fact, statutory rape criminal and reporting laws resemble a tangled web of convoluted policies that can make compliance difficult.

A federally funded comprehensive guide to statutory rape criminal and reporting laws published in 2004 explains that, as of 2003, only about a dozen states have a single age of consent, ranging from 14 to 18 years old. For example, in Kansas it is considered statutory rape to engage in sexual activity with a minor 15 years old or younger, regardless of the age of the sex partner.

Most states, however, determine the age of consent—in other words, when sex involving a minor is a crime—based on the ages and age differences between partners. Under Indiana’s “sexual misconduct with a minor” law, for example, it is considered statutory rape for a person at least 18 years of age to have sexual intercourse with a minor who is at least 14 but under 16. The penalties increase if the alleged offender is at least 21 years old and/or if the sexual intercourse is committed “by using or threatening the use of deadly force.”

States also differ on who is required to report potential instances of statutory rape and under what circumstances. According to the 2004 report, which was produced by the Lewin Group, a health-care consulting firm, about one-third of states mandate reporting only when the sexual abuse involves a relative or guardian, while two-thirds mandate reporting of potential child abuse, including statutory rape, regardless of the relationship between the “victim and the defendant.”

Many anti-choice advocates argue that young women and girls seeking abortions are often the victims of statutory rape, incest, or sex trafficking and that abortion providers actively ignore statutory rape reporting laws. Anti-choice groups, such as Live Action, have suggested that abortion providers safeguard rapists; others, such as the Charlotte Lozier Institute, have suggested that reproductive health facilities help to “perpetuate sex trafficking of women by failing to identify and rescue trafficked women and girls.”

There is little comprehensive research, however, to suggest that the majority of minors who seek abortions are more likely to have been victims of rape and incest than those who don’t seek abortions.

Though there are detailed, albeit knotty, requirements in every state about what to report, when, and to whom, statutory rape is often lumped in with sexual offenses or child sexual abuse in local and national data reporting. As a result, “little is known about the scope of statutory rape,” according to a subsequent Lewin Group report published in 2006.

The nonprofit research center Child Trends periodically attempts to assess rates of statutory rape among young people in the United States. In its most recent report, Child Trends analyzed data from the National Survey of Family Growth and found that, from 2006 to 2010, among individuals ages 18 to 24, 10 percent of females and 6 percent of males reported having their first sexual experience at age 15 or younger with an individual who was at least three years older, which Child Trends defined as statutory rape.

Though many health-care providers wish teenagers would wait longer before having sex, many also agree that statutory rape laws sometimes interfere with treating minors who, despite such laws, have chosen to engage in consensual sexual activity. In 2004, four major medical organizations that deal with adolescents—the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the Society of Adolescent Medicine—published a position paper in the Journal of Adolescent Health, arguing that some of the nation’s statutory rape reporting laws, and some of the interpretations of such laws, posed the risk of impeding the provider-patient relationship and were thus “detrimental to adolescents.” The article notes that providers should be allowed to use their discretion when looking for evidence of coercive sexual relationships and should not assume that sexual activity and sexual abuse are synonymous, even among adolescents.

“Well-intentioned but rigid laws can lead to outcomes that are both unintended and potentially damaging to the health of an adolescent,” the paper notes. “When a state’s laws require that sexual intercourse with a minor be reported to law enforcement or child welfare agencies, a sexually active adolescent in a consensual relationship may be placed in the untenable situation of forgoing essential health care (e.g., contraception, screening or treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, etc.) or, if he or she seeks that care, being reported to state authorities.”

In addition to potentially dissuading teens from seeking health care, it is also unclear to what extent instances of statutory rape are actually investigated, even once a report is made.

In its research, the Lewin Group found that child welfare agencies receive the majority of statutory rape reports but that many of these agencies often only investigate cases involving a family member. The child protection agencies will usually then forward along the report to the appropriate law enforcement agency, but the Lewin Group researchers noted that many times, the report will lack “sufficient details to warrant further investigation.”

Abortion providers have reported a similar trend when it comes to submitting their required statutory rape reports.

Dr. Ann Kristin Neuhaus, a former family doctor and abortion provider in Kansas, had her medical license revoked last year following a state investigation launched by then-Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, allegedly to determine whether abortion clinics were complying with statutory rape reporting laws.

The Kansas State Board of Healing Arts ultimately ruled that the mental health examinations Neuhaus gave to 11 young women—to determine if they should be granted second- and third-trimester abortions—did not meet the state’s standard of care. The accusations were based on some of Neuhaus’ files generated using a computer program. Neuhaus disputes the main charges against her; for example, she said the board accused her of never having met some of the patients she said she consulted with because her signature was missing on some of the documents. She is currently appealing the board’s decision.

But Neuhaus told RH Reality Check that, to her knowledge, most of the cases she reported to child protective services were never even investigated.

“If it was something questionable, then they would investigate it, but the vast majority of things that get reported are consensual sex with people between the ages of 14 and 16,” Neuhaus said.

Yet, in recent years, some state attorneys general have used statutory rape reporting requirements as a means to obtain abortion providers’ medical records, normally protected under federal privacy laws.

What transpired in Kansas resulted in minors’ private medical records being broadcast on a cable news show.

The quest for records began in 2003, when, after becoming attorney general, Kline reinterpreted a state law to demand that abortion providers report every minor under 16 who has an abortion—whereas the old law only stipulated that medical professionals had to report when they suspected minors had been injured as a result of sexual abuse.

Kline launched a years-long “investigation” into Kansas’ abortion clinics and subpoenaed patients’ medical records at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Overland Park and at Dr. George Tiller’s abortion clinic in Wichita. Kline’s stated reasoning for the investigation was to check whether the clinics were complying with statutory reporting requirements, as well as state laws restricting post-viability abortions. Following three years of disciplinary proceedings against Kline, last month the Kansas Supreme Court indefinitely suspended Kline’s law license for violating rules of professional conduct in relation to his prosecution of abortion providers.

According to Neuhaus, who worked as a consultant to Tiller from 1999 to 2007, the state never found evidence that instances of suspected statutory rape were going unreported. However, she said the state attorney general’s office used the investigation into statutory rape reporting requirements to look at the medical records of the abortion clinics.

“Then they used those records to dig for other things and to create more trouble,” Neuhaus said.

In the end, the state’s charges against Neuhaus involved her referrals for post-viability abortions rather than breaching the statutory rape reporting policy.

As part of her role with Tiller, Neuhaus provided second opinions for abortions involving fetuses that were beyond the point of viability, which is deemed to be 22 weeks’ gestation under Kansas law. In order to perform abortions in those circumstances, the law requires a second doctor’s opinion stating the abortion is necessary for the health of the pregnant person.

Neuhaus said she intentionally made her records sparse in order to protect her patients’ privacy—she worried they might someday become public. Her fears were realized one day in September 2011, when Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly broadcast information, allegedly from Neuhaus’ medical records, on his show, The O’Reilly Factor.

“This is Case File Number 3,” O’Reilly said in a segment recorded by liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America. “Dr. Neuhaus diagnosed a 15-year-old girl, who said she had a mental depression because she couldn’t bear not being able to continue riding in a rodeo.”

Neuhaus said she believes O’Reilly’s information came directly from her medical files, though to this day she does not know how O’Reilly obtained them. She told RH Reality Check that some of her medical files were momentarily seized—and then returned to her—by one of Kline’s lawyers during their investigation of Neuhaus’ consultation practice for Tiller’s patients.

As for the characterization of her patient, transcripts from the hearings into Neuhaus’ case show that the 15-year-old girl O’Reilly referred to was training to be a professional barrel racer and had become depressed, according to Neuhaus’ diagnosis, because she feared having a baby would ruin her career ambitions.

Following the investigation, Neuhaus was ultimately charged with providing “inadequate” consultations to 11 women between the ages of 10 and 18 who sought abortions after 22 weeks’ gestation. (Tiller was acquitted of charges filed against him in March 2009; the state opened new charges but dropped them after he was murdered by an anti-choice extremist two months later.)

Neuhaus, who is now a research fellow at the University of Kansas Medical Center, said she would have documented more about these cases had she not feared the confidentiality agreement between her and her patients would have been breached, as they were. And while the reports in her case were required because they involved later pregnancies, many providers and public health advocates say the same risks are posed by laws that require reporting of any abortions involving minors.

Neuhaus said she believes wholeheartedly in statutory rape reporting laws but thinks Kansas’ rigid age restrictions are problematic, because the state defines sex with a minor under 16 years old as rape, regardless of the circumstances.

“Anyone who works with teenagers knows that it is normal teen behavior and that teens do have sex,” she said. “They generally start having sex somewhere between 14 and 16. So, this is the norm; it’s not the exception. And it goes on regardless of whatever other legislation is in place. … People are pretty sure that at 16, you’re not fully adult. However, there is this other element that people go through puberty and they start doing things that may or may not be in their best interest, but it’s happening anyway. So to criminalize it is kind of stupid and counterproductive.”

Anti-Choice Activists Use Laws to Force Clinic Closures

In some cases, breaches of statutory rape reporting requirements have resulted in abortion providers and clinics either being disciplined or shuttered. RH Reality Check’s recent investigation into documents requested by two congressional committees turned up a handful of reports of violations in Alabama and Louisiana between 2008 and 2013 related to mandatory statutory rape reporting. But the information provided by state health departments only tells part of the story.

In response to questions from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the Alabama Department of Public Health reported that in June 2010 the state revoked the license of the Summit Women’s Center of Montgomery, Inc., also known as the Beacon Women’s Center. The eventual closure of the Montgomery, Alabama, clinic was based on a series of violations, including failure “to report an instance of suspected sexual abuse of an unemancipated minor.”

A health department statement of deficiencies dated February 1, 2010, shows that the instance of “suspected sexual abuse” involved a 14-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy, barely meeting the state’s definition of statutory rape. According to Alabama law, minors 15 and younger cannot legally consent to sex; however, “sexual intercourse” with someone under 16 but over 12 is not considered rape as long as the sex partner is less than two years older than the victim.

The state also charged the clinic with failing to develop clinic-specific policies or protocol related to mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse. According to the deficiency reports, during multiple visits by state officials, clinic employees only produced a general policy written by the National Abortion Federation.

Another Alabama clinic, a Planned Parenthood facility in Birmingham, was cited for a statutory rape reporting violation, among others, but did not lose its license, because it subsequently implemented a plan of correction.

But this violation arose from an undercover encounter with anti-choice activists who lied to a clinic staffer and prompted her to acknowledge a fictitious sexual relationship between a 14-year-old girl and a 31-year-old man without reporting it to authorities.

A deficiency report shows this violation was sparked by a conversation surreptitiously recorded by Live Action, best known for conducting sting operations at Planned Parenthood clinics. On July 2, 2008, Live Action President Lila Rose and a colleague visited the Birmingham clinic, where the then-20-year-old Rose posed as a 14-year-old girl who had been impregnated by her 31-year-old boyfriend. Rose told the clinic worker that the sex was consensual and that she wanted the abortion but did not want her parents to know.

According to the transcript from Live Action’s recording, the clinic worker told Rose that as a minor she would not be able to obtain the abortion without the consent of a parent or guardian. When Rose asked if there was a problem with her boyfriend being 31, the clinic worker asked if Rose consented to the sex. She eventually told Rose to call back the next day to talk to a health center manager. When Rose asked if the manager would report this situation to her parents, the clinic worker told her she didn’t think they could because of privacy laws.

In August 2008, after Live Action released this recording on its website, the Alabama health department conducted a “complaint investigation” and cited the clinic with not having developed and complied with the state’s statutory rape reporting laws.

Since 2008, Live Action has advanced its campaign using secret recordings in hypothetical situations in an attempt to prove that Planned Parenthood clinics assist child molesters and sex traffickers by failing to report abortions involving minors. Perhaps most notably, in 2011 Live Action aired a secretly taped video of a New Jersey Planned Parenthood clinic manager talking to actors posing as a pimp and underage prostitutes about how to circumvent reporting requirements. Congressional lawmakers and anti-choice leaders have used this video to advance the narrative that Planned Parenthood colludes with pimps and child molesters.

Anti-Choice Influence on Legislation

Most state laws identify health-care providers as mandatory reporters of statutory rape, but some states have updated reporting laws so that they specifically target reproductive health-care providers.

This year, Arkansas enacted a law based on language drafted by Americans United for Life (AUL), which adds employees and volunteers of “reproductive health facilities” to the state’s list of mandatory reporters of suspected sexual abuse of minors. Last year, Mississippi implemented AUL’s model law, the “Child Protection Act,” which, among other statutory rape reporting requirements, forces abortion clinics to turn over fetal tissue samples to state health officials when an abortion is performed on a minor under 14.

The strategy is not just to shutter abortion clinics, but also to create a false public belief that abortion providers are implicated in child sexual abuse.

In fact, the aforementioned federally funded research on statutory rape laws produced by the Lewin Group was reportedly pushed by conservative congressional members who wanted to check out a charge by anti-choice activists. According to a Guttmacher Institute report from 2004, the Denton, Texas-based anti-choice group Life Dynamics, Inc., had accused family planning providers of actively circumventing state child abuse reporting requirements. Family planning providers, including Planned Parenthood, receive federal funds—thus, the Lewin Group was tasked with researching how these providers handled cases of potential sexual abuse involving minors.

Through site visits, the Lewin Group researchers found that preventing sexually abusive relationships involves partnerships among several government agencies and service providers; they found no evidence that reproductive health facilities were actively circumventing reporting laws.

Indeed, these laws could actually be harming the same young women they purport to protect, according to public health experts. Not only do they place the burden of reporting on people who might not be trained to identify abusive situations, such as clinic volunteers answering the phone, but they could even frighten adolescents away from seeking medical care for fear of being reported to law enforcement.

“If young people fear that they may be reported to the authorities—whether that be child welfare authorities or law enforcement authorities—they may be more reluctant to disclose all of the information to a health-care professional that would be important in enabling that health-care provider to really provide optimal care for them,” said the Center for Adolescent Health & the Law’s Abigail English. “So I see that as the biggest downside of mandatory reporting laws.”

New York has been on the forefront of some of the most cutting-edge labor movements, but when it comes to child models, New York is behind more than 20 states that include child models in their state labor codes. That may soon change.

Kate Moss was only 14 when she was discovered by a model management company at JFK Airport in New York City. At the time, there were no child labor laws to protect her in New York.

That was in 1988. The same is still true in New York today—though that is likely to change soon.

New York City is the fashion capital of the world, and thousands of girls and young women flock to the city to pursue their dreams of becoming models. New York’s labor code does not yet include protections for child models—a policy gap that is noteworthy for an industry in which young women often endure sexual abuse, harassment, and unpaid wages. New York has been on the forefront of some of the most cutting-edge labor movements, but when it comes to child models, New York is behind more than 20 states, including Alabama, Missouri, North Carolina, and Texas, that include child models in their state labor codes.

The Model Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to protecting and improving working conditions for models, identified this policy gap and has been educating state policymakers about it. As a result, earlier this month, the New York legislature passed its first ever child model law, adding “print and runway models” to the list of child performers protected by New York Department of Labor regulations. Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo is expected to sign the law, which requires designers who hire print and runway models under the age of 18 to put a portion of the model’s earnings into a trust. The law will also require designers to hire chaperones and tutors for young models on set, which could help create safer working conditions.

Anna Durrett, a spokesperson for the two key sponsors of the child model law, state Sens. Jeffery Klein (D-Bronx) and Diane Savino (D-Staten Island), told RH Reality Check there just hadn’t been any awareness around this issue until the Model Alliance came along. “It was just a question of organizing,” Durrett said. “There wasn’t anyone like the Model Alliance around to galvanize people around this.”

Last September, Model Alliance Founder and Director Sara Ziff testified at the New York State Department of Labor about working conditions and risks child models face, as well as the exclusion of child models from labor protections. (She is also a model who, like Moss, began her career at 14.) Ziff then started a petition addressed to Gov. Cuomo making the case that child models should be included in labor regulations, and she wrote an editorial about the issue for the New York Times.

Among other things, Ziff’s advocacy informed New York legislators that the hiring of child models has actually long been governed by the New York Department of Education (DOE), not the Department of Labor, and there were no teeth to the DOE regulations.

“It just makes no sense,” Ziff said. “There’s no enforcement power at the DOE. Even though child models are required to have work permits, these permits look like they were drafted in 1960s, and to be honest, I’ve never actually seen one.”

In 2011, the fashion industry employed 165,000 people, generated $1.7 billion in tax revenue, and brought in $55 billion in sales. Young girls are a crucial piece of this industry. In addition to being mostly female, the majority of child models begin working between the ages of 13 and 16.

According to Ziff, actually including child model regulations within the Department of Labor is a significant step forward for these girls. BuzzFeed’s Amy Odell pointed out soon after the legislature’s vote that “The law is expected to affect female models more than male models, who tend to start their careers a little older.”

There are many reasons child models should be protected by the labor code, including the frequency of harassment and abuse models experience. A white paper released this year by the New York Senate Independent Democratic Conference found:

Approximately 30% of female print and runway models have experienced inappropriate touching while modeling. Another 28% experienced pressure to engage in sexual intercourse at the workplace during their career. Greater than three-quarters of models (77%) admitted to being exposed to alcohol and drugs while working. These numbers are extremely alarming. This is only amplified when one considers that a mere 29% of models experiencing some form of abuse were comfortable with reporting it to the agency representing them.

After the Model Alliance put enough spotlight on these working conditions as well as the policy exclusion, Sen. Klein contacted Ziff and began working on child model protections for the New York labor code.

“It wasn’t without effort, but [the New York legislators] really came to us,” Ziff said.

This piece originally appeared in In These Timesand was published in partnership with the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.

Like millions of Mexicans, Carolina Martínez dreamed of coming to the United States to work. Her plan was to put in a few years in the fields, save up enough money to return to her hometown, and build a house there for her family. Her husband was already working on a farm outside of Albion, New York, so she knew there was money to be made, certainly more than the few dollars per day she typically made selling food on the street.

In 2004, at the age of 21, she took her 1-year-old child and traveled some 1,200 miles by bus to the U.S. border, where she handed off her son to a friend and found a coyote (smuggler) who would guide her and 10 others across for $2,000 each. It took a full week of hard and dangerous walking to get through the desert. She ran out of food and water, and at one point twisted her ankle, but she didn’t dare stop. “We passed people who were dead,” she recalls. But she made it out of the desert alive, reunited with her infant son—whom her friend had driven across the border—and eventually made her way to a small town outside of Rochester, New York, where she joined her husband. Martínez quickly found work packing potatoes and onions.

The work was hard. During planting and harvest seasons she might work 10 hours a day, six or seven days a week. But she had expected that. What she hadn’t expected was the near-constant sexual harassment on the job. The crew leader would, she says, “touch women in a sexual way … touch women on their asses.” When Martínez threatened to report him, he’d warn, “They’ll get rid of you. And if you do go to the boss, I’ll call Immigration.”

So she didn’t tell the boss. And she didn’t tell her husband either, afraid he’d be so angry that he’d pick a fight and they’d both get fired—or worse, deported. “Women have to tolerate this in silence,” she says. “Because if you talk to the owners and you lose your job, then what? Many times during lunch, I cried. I felt I was alone.” The harassment continued every day for seven months.

Cheryl Gee, a domestic and sexual violence specialist in the Rochester office of the Worker Justice Center of New York, has heard countless such tales in the 12 years that she has provided victim advocacy to women farmworkers. “Many of them perceive rape and sexual harassment to be part of coming here and doing this work,” she says. “They believe this is what they have to go through to feed their families.”

The majority of women farmworkers interviewed in 2010 by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Human Rights Watch had experienced some form of sexual harassment or assault, which ranged from verbal abuse to rape. One 2010 study published in the journal Violence Against Women estimated that as many as 80 percent of women farmworkers in certain areas of the country have been sexually harassed or assaulted on the job. It’s so bad on some farms in Florida and California that women call the fields “the green motel” or “the field of panties.”

What NAFTA Sowed

Women make up slightly more than 20 percent of U.S. farmworkers, and of these, the majority are immigrants from Mexico. Women become migratory workers for the same reasons men do—in many cases, to escape rural poverty. The Mexican government estimates that 80 percent of all campesinos earn less than $2 a day. Increases in the cost of staples such as rice, beans, and eggs have made things more difficult for the working poor. Policies such as NAFTA have also strengthened agribusiness and driven up food imports, pushing small farmers and farmworkers even deeper into poverty—and, in many cases, off their lands.

Now, workers traveling to the United States are staying longer, and sometimes permanently; they can no longer count on earning even poverty wages back home, and those in the United States are afraid to leave because it’s no longer so easy to slip back across the border.

“People used to stay two, three years and go back to Mexico,” says Amí Kadar, the former director of the now defunct Congreso Independiente de Trabajadores Agricolos, an agricultural workers center in Albion, New York. “Now, with so much activity at the border, they’re staying seven, eight years or longer. A lot of women, their husbands are here and they want to join them.” She said some single women are coming, too. “They think, ‘Men can go and make money, I want to, also.’”

These women, like so many undocumented workers, often end up on farms, doing some of the most dangerous work in the United States. According to the National Safety Council and the Department of Labor, farm work consistently ranks among the top five industries for accidents and injuries. It’s also among the lowest paying. And for immigrant women, it’s rife with sexual harassment and abuse.

“Generally, [the perpetrator] will have some kind of legal immigration status,” says Liz Maria Chacko, a supervising attorney at Friends of Farmworkers in Philadelphia. “This gives them power over their victims. They’ll make threats like, ‘I have papers and you don’t.’” According to Chacko, a lack of fluency in English makes the women even more vulnerable. Their immediate supervisors, who tend to be their harassers, also tend to be bilingual. If a woman complains, the perpetrator can directly present his case to the farm owner in English. The woman who’s been victimized cannot.

That’s what happened at one farm where Carolina Martínez worked. She says the manager, a Mexican immigrant himself, routinely approached women for sex. (He didn’t bother her, probably because she lived with her husband.) “He told [women] if they did not have sex with him, they were going to lose their jobs,” she says. Many women complied. Finally, one woman spoke up about the abuse to the farm owner. But, says Martínez, the owner didn’t believe her. In fact, he may not have understood her at all, because the woman spoke only Spanish and the owner, like most, spoke only English—while the supervisor spoke both. The handful of bilingual workers who could have translated were afraid to get involved. Not willing to lose his manager, the owner instead fired the woman who complained—which sent a strong message to the other women.

Chacko says owners often react defensively to accusations of harassment. “The response we get is usually denial.”

A second group of agricultural laborers particularly vulnerable to harassment are those in food processing plants, says Chacko. “I don’t think I’ve spoken with a woman worker in meat packing or poultry processing who hasn’t experienced sexual harassment,” she says. “A male supervisor will just walk down the line and run his hand along their buttock, make sexual comments.” She represented one woman who worked in a food processing plant who was forced to have sex with her supervisor in order to keep her job.

Another client, Josefina Romero, grew up in Guadalajara and immigrated from Mexico eight years ago to escape working for poverty wages in a plastic bottle factory in Mexico City. Hoping to save money to help her mother, who was sick with diabetes, she headed north and eventually ended up working at a poultry plant in Pennsylvania. Romero’s new line leader liked to harass the women on the assembly line as they worked. “At first it was only words, and then he started touching women,” she says. “He’d walk behind you, make sure he wasn’t being watched, and he would grab your breasts, your ass.”

Romero considered approaching a supervisor, “but he was worse—he was harassing women, too.” She complained repeatedly to other management, but no actions were taken. She had no one to confide in; she was afraid to tell her husband because she thought he might attack her line manager.

At one point, Romero woke up to find half her face temporarily paralyzed. At the hospital, doctors told her the problem was most likely stress-related. “All that pressure to remain quiet made me sick,” she says.

A month after her last complaint to management, she was fired.

Who to Trust?

In its report, the Southern Poverty Law Center calls women agricultural workers “the perfect victims.” They are typically undocumented and don’t speak English. They desperately need the work to support their families back in Mexico. Those who work on farms often live in remote camps or farmer-owned houses, far from any town. If the harassment gets bad enough, they may finally approach their employer or an advocate. But these women almost never involve law enforcement. “A client has the right to file a criminal charge [in sexual harassment cases],” says Chacko, “but I’ve never had anyone do that.” One worker put it this way: “It’s a rule Mexicans have…never call police because they will call Immigration. If I get beaten and I call the police, then I’m beaten and deported.”

Sheriff John York of Livingston County in western New York says that in his experience, undocumented workers aren’t afraid of the police or sheriffs themselves—they’re afraid that these local law enforcement officers will call Immigration. Because Mexican farmworkers rarely speak English and officers rarely speak Spanish, most officers will call Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for translation, York says. And when the federal officials show up, they’ll usually ask for identification, even from the victim—exactly what undocumented women most fear. “I don’t tell women they should go to law enforcement or they shouldn’t,” says Gee. “I tell them it’s an option, and we talk about the risk. The immediate risk is they’re going to be detained.”

Theresa Asmus is a rape crisis service supervisor in Batavia, New York—not far from Livingston County—who also works with victims of domestic violence, including some farmworkers. She says that undocumented women often wait to seek help until they have been “victimized so severely that seeking the protection of the police was a life or death choice.”

Occasionally, police involvement can have a happy ending. One young woman I spoke with, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala who worked on a vegetable farm in western New York, finally sought police help after being raped twice by a friend of her husband. The perpetrator was arrested and deported and, with Gee’s help, the young woman applied for a U-Visa, which grants crime victims temporary legal status and work eligibility for up to four years.

Harassed and Defeated

Mike Scioli is a lead Border Patrol agent based in Grand Island, New York. He says that crime victims have no reason to fear the Border Patrol or ICE. “If someone is a victim, that takes precedence over anything,” he says. “In a rescue, legal or illegal doesn’t come up.” (ICE officials did not respond to repeated calls and emails requesting an interview.)

But immigrant advocates tell a different story. Lew Papenfuse, co-executive director of the Rochester-based Worker Justice Center, says that, in his experience, whether an undocumented crime victim is detained and deported depends on “the enlightenment” of the law enforcement agent. In some domestic violence cases, immigration is called; in others, officers focus on helping the victim.

“We do call Border Patrol or ICE when there’s a language issue,” says Sheriff Scott Hess of Orleans County, on Lake Ontario in New York. “It’s at the deputy’s discretion.” Hess is aware that calling federal agents for translation presented a problem for undocumented crime victims. “There are a lot of crimes in the Hispanic community that go unreported because of ICE or Border Patrol and the language issue. [But] we don’t have the luxury of calling a paid interpreter.”

Sheriff York’s department does things differently, relying instead on volunteer interpreters from the community. He has also worked with advocates to “build trust”—and send a message: “We’re not going to treat them as illegals.” But, he adds, “Not every police department does what we do.”

Women who are the victims of serious crimes, including rape, domestic violence, and sexual harassment, are eligible to apply for a U-Visa. But in order to qualify, they must cooperate with law enforcement—and thus risk deportation. Several of the women in this article, including Martínez, have been granted U-Visas, but they described it as a long and complicated process fraught with risk.

Most of the women farmworkers I interviewed who experienced harassment ended up feeling defeated.

Ana Gutiérrez, like the other women I spoke with for this article, came to the United States seeking a better life for her family. She’d been working in a stationery store in Copala, Mexico, earning about $25 a week, barely enough to provide for her infant daughter. Like Martínez, her plan was to save enough to build a home in Mexico by working in the United States for a few years. She entered the country in 2003 and ended up in New York’s Hudson Valley, where she found work on a duck farm. The farm produced paté, which requires that the ducks be force-fed every few hours. “It was very hard work,” she says.“Very dirty.”

In addition to the brutal work schedule, Gutiérrez found herself subjected to nearly constant sexual harassment by a Mexican coworker. “He said he would help with my work if I paid him with my body,” she says. The abuse got so bad that she finally quit. But at her next job, on another farm, men also harassed women. When she spoke to me she was between jobs, desperately hoping to get another job and save enough money just to return home to Mexico, her dream in tatters. “The United States is not a pretty place,” she says. “It is like a prison. I have a sister and niece who wanted to come here. I told them not to come. To live here is to suffer.”

Names of agricultural workers have been changed to protect their anonymity.

Richard Mourdock argued in a debate that women who have been raped should not have access to abortion services because their pregnancies are a “gift from god.” As a survivor of childhood sexual violence, I disagree with him completely.

This is one of a series of powerful stories from survivors of rape, you will find them all here.

This week, Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock argued in a debate that women who have been raped should not have access to abortion services because their pregnancies are a “gift from god.” As a survivor of childhood sexual violence, I disagree with him completely.

My name is Dawn Hill. Though I am old now, there was a time when I was young and carefree as you perhaps are now or can remember being in your childhood. Childhood should be a happy and carefree time for all our children, but my mother found her new husband, my stepfather, much more important. He forever took the joy away from my life when I was just 11 years old: He began molesting me and continued until he began raping me when I was 13.

Mr. Mourdock last night said: “I came to realize life is that gift from God, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape. It is something that God intended to happen.”

I became pregnant, contrary to the “scientific theories” of many modern Republicans. Not only was the experience loathsome and painful, it was also impossible for me to deal with or talk about because of the times: in the fifties, abortion was illegal. Illegal in the same way the Republican Party platform states it wants to make abortion now by constitutional amendment and just as Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has suggested casually he would “be delighted” to return to.

Please, take a moment to travel back to the fifties with me.

My mother took me to Mexico, where anyone could get an abortion for a price. I have blocked out many memories associated with this entire experience, but I remember the pain. Illegal abortions are not the simple safe vacuum procedure used today by legal abortion providers. Oh, no: They were a “dilatation and curettage.”

This means that my cervix was mechanically opened by insertion of larger and larger metal “dilators” until it was opened enough to get a sort of sharpened spoon inside my 13-year-old uterus, while strangers looked at my exposed parts that were theretofore called “private.”

It was cold and dirty in the room, and then the true torture started. They shoved this curette into me and scraped away the entire lining of my uterus with the sharp side. I screamed the entire time even though no one had seen so much as a tear out of me before this moment because I had developed a stony stoicism to protect my mind from the molestation.

This pain was, however, like nothing I’ve ever felt before or since. Can you imagine what happened to those women and girls who couldn’t even get this barbaric abortion? They stuck wire hangers into themselves and bled to death or suffered other horrible complications. Then, too, I also got a terrible infection from the filthy conditions.

I can tell you, though, that I would have gotten a hundred illegal abortions before carrying that monster’s offspring and going through labor, even to give the child away. That would have been the unkindest cut of all.

For women and girls, safe legal abortions are essential. While many will choose a different path than I with their pregnancies, having that choice is essential. Any encroachment on that right is an encroachment on the life, liberty, and safety of the women and girls of America.

The prison term handed down yesterday to former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky—despite his claims of innocence and conspiracy—will effectively keep him locked away for the rest of his life. And it puts the rest of us at a collective crossroads in our own lives.

The sentence by Judge Cleland has received a near-universal endorsement from anyone familiar with the sordid details of Sandusky’s sexual abuse of at least ten boys over a 15-year period. Sandusky was convicted of 45 counts of sexual abuse against the boys, who had come under his influence while he served as a Penn State coach and as the founder of Second Mile, a program for at-risk youth.

Sandusky’s charitable works, his professions of innocence, and his goofy grin have revealed him to be a complex archetype and an easily demonized caricature of a predatory sexual manipulator. These two images respectively offer a great opportunity and a significant danger for educating adults about how to prevent future sexual abuse of children.

And so, we must choose.

We have an unprecedented opening to use this case’s stunning lessons about ignorance, self-interest, and responsibility to closely examine widespread, false assumptions about the dynamics of child sexual abuse and how to prevent it. These assumptions make us all susceptible to becoming silent bystanders who, like many in Sandusky’s midst, fail to protect vulnerable children due to self-protective confusion, fear, or misunderstanding.

Or we can seek reassurance in the caricature and congratulate ourselves for putting away a man whom many equate with evil. We can punish the callous individuals and institutions we believe should have stopped Sandusky. We can consider our duty done. We can convince ourselves that “they” were the problem, and “we” would have done better. That’s the danger of this scenario.

Let’s be clear. Almost all adults are convinced they would speak up and intervene if they became aware of a child at risk of being sexually abused. But research and the experience of many survivors of sexual abuse demonstrate that more often than not, adults don’t speak up.

Why? Because we all want to view people that we know as “good” and to believe naively that we’ll recognize the “bad” ones.

One of the greatest barriers to preventing child sexual abuse is this either-or-thinking. This thinking held up Jerry Sandusky as a widely admired savior of kids and has now turned him into the bogeyman. When any of us has to choose between two extremes of saint or devil, we’re generally reluctant to re-categorize someone we respect into the negative category without absolute proof. But research shows that most people who sexually abuse children are complicated individuals with good qualities as well as a horribly destructive problem. They are not solely manipulative monsters.

To stay safe, kids need the adults in their lives to embrace that complex reality.

Only then do adults realize that it’s possible to start challenging behaviors that confuse children about what’s okay and what isn’t. That’s real prevention.

Children need adults in their lives who’ve educated themselves about warning sign behaviors and situations that may indicate an increased risk of abuse.

Children need adults who are knowledgeable about healthy sexual development and age-appropriate sexual behavior. Children need the adults in their families, programs, schools, and faith communities to speak up—and to follow up.

Showering alone with a young boy—that’s a warning sign.

Sharing a bedroom alone on a trip—that’s a warning sign.

Gifts and favors, special rules, secrets—they’re all warning signs.

Penn State coaches, administrators, and Second-Mile officials didn’t need to determine that Sandusky had bad intentions or an evil personality to take decisive action. They needed only to recognize that he was violating good, interpersonal boundariesi. Whatever his intentions, he was setting dangerous precedents. Those are the warning signs that adults can learn to recognize and use to prevent abuse— before it happens.

As satisfying as Sandusky’s long sentence may feel, preventing abuse will always have a much greater positive impact on our children, families, and communities than punishment will after the fact.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/10/12/our-choices-in-wake-jerry-sanduskys-sentencing/feed/0Street Harassment: A Means of Control That We Need to Get Under Controlhttp://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/06/29/street-harassment-means-control-that-we-need-to-get-under-control/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=street-harassment-means-control-that-we-need-to-get-under-control
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/06/29/street-harassment-means-control-that-we-need-to-get-under-control/#commentsFri, 29 Jun 2012 10:43:31 +0000Rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and any other form of violence and abuse directed at those the perpetrator wishes to control all come from a place that will continue to exist as long as we let it.

]]>Street harassment—sexual harassment of women in public—has gained notoriety in Western media since the start of the Arab spring. Most recently, a harrowing first-person narrative of a mob sexual assault of a Western woman on Cairo streets had an editor from The Atlantic conclude that he would do anything to stop his daughters from going to Egypt and being exposed to that kind of abuse.

Unfortunately, research suggests that if you want to prevent your daughters from experiencing street harassment, you would need to keep them off the streets pretty much anywhere. The vast majority of women from Indianapolis to Beijing have experienced street harassment at some point, including leering, whistling, and sexual grabbing or touching.

And though most street harassment definitely is less physically aggressive than the story from Egypt, it is anything but benign. Enough scholars have examined the socio-political context and psycho-social consequences of street harassment to conclude that men harassing women in public is a symptom of the sentiment it perpetuates: women as inferior objects of prey.

I know what I am talking about, as does just about every women and post-pubescent girl. The worst case of street harassment I have suffered made me throw up and had me tank a job interview. Even now, 18 years after, I remember the smell of the guy who slid up behind me on a Paris metro escalator to hold me still while he whispered into my ear just what he was planning on doing to me. I froze, somehow unable to move. When the interminable escalator-ride was over, the guy was gone and I was retching. I did keep my interview afterwards, but lost the job.

But even the other, less horrible, cases of harassment took their toll. There was the adolescent boy who purposefully ran into me on a street in downtown Guatemala City some time in early 1997 and grabbed my crotch, hard, for precisely 3 seconds (I counted). Or the grown man who did the same on the F-train in New York City this very year. Both had me shaking and slightly disoriented for hours.

I could go on.

What I remember most clearly from each incident is the feeling of powerlessness and humiliation. The knowledge that this man, whoever he is, sees me as something (or rather: some thing) to crush and control. And the absolutely certainty—born out in fact—that no one around me was going to help.

I know, of course, that this is precisely what I am meant to feel.

I also know that the power imbalance and contempt of women’s autonomy and sexuality that is acted out in sexual harassment of any kind is what makes it hard to talk about. That and the fact that bystanders often acquiesce or contribute to the abuse.

Take sexual harassment in college. Despite the fact that two thirds of American college students say they have been sexually harassed, it is incredibly hard to get anyone to speak out about it on the record. Consider what Rush Limbaugh said about Sandra Fluke for defending access to contraception for college-students for non-sexual reasons. Imagine what would be said of someone who acknowledged that a professor or other student had made an unwelcome pass at them. I certainly understand not wanting to expose oneself to that.

(I have been sexually harassed at university twice. One of those times, a professor asked me to sleep with him the night before he was to grade my final paper. I declined. A fellow student, who had witnessed the exchange, promptly and not without glee informed me that now I was certain to flunk.)

The mob attack in Egypt highlighted this week in The Atlantic is, of course, closer to sexual assault than sexual harassment. Such assault is also not particular to far-off places like Egypt or South Africa. Statistics from the United States indicate a rape rate that is 13 times higher than that of Germany, and 20 times that of Japan.

Rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and any other form of violence and abuse directed at those the perpetrator wishes to control all come from a place that will continue to exist as long as we let it. Whether in Egypt, in Paris, in Cape Town, or in Brooklyn, the least we can do is speak up.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/06/29/street-harassment-means-control-that-we-need-to-get-under-control/feed/0Memo to Bishops: It’s Not About You. It’s About the Actual Victims.http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/11/17/bishops-%E2%80%93-it%E2%80%99s-not-about-you/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bishops-%25E2%2580%2593-it%25E2%2580%2599s-not-about-you
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/11/17/bishops-%E2%80%93-it%E2%80%99s-not-about-you/#commentsThu, 17 Nov 2011 21:24:05 +0000Slavery. It’s an abomination. And it goes without saying that survivors of modern-day slavery — human trafficking — should be able to access all of the services they need to protect their health and rebuild their lives. That is, unless you’re talking to the powerful political lobbyist, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

Slavery. It’s an abomination. And it goes without saying that survivors of modern-day slavery — human trafficking — should be able to access all of the services they need to protect their health and rebuild their lives. That is, unless you’re talking to the powerful political lobbyist, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

They’re raising a ruckus about so-called anti-Catholic bias because they weren’t given a grant by the Department of Health and Human Services for aid to trafficking victims. Why? Because they refuse to allow sub-grantees (the bishops are middlemen here, regranting the money to on-the-ground service providers) to offer access to contraception and abortion to trafficked women. Women who have been raped repeatedly and controlled by their traffickers. Women who urgently need reproductive health care and the power to make their own decisions and retake command of their own lives.

But that’s not stopping the bishops and their politically connected friends from expressing “false outrage over non-existent discrimination,” as Religion Dispatches’ Sarah Posner aptly points out. Posner exposes the basic flaw in the bishops’ premise: it’s not about them.

“The USCCB not getting taxpayer money doesn’t mean the government is anti-Catholic. No one is just entitled to federal grants. But the beneficiaries of federally-funded services are entitled to those services free of religious directives. And for victims of sex trafficking, comprehensive reproductive health services are just what the doctor ordered.”

The bishops are wise in the ways of political messaging and want to play the victim card with anyone who disagrees with them, rather than acknowledging that in our democracy, disagreement over public policy is par for the course.

There are real victims of religious discrimination in the world. Just as there are real victims when we’re talking about the evils of human trafficking. Here’s a hint: they’re not the bishops.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/11/17/bishops-%E2%80%93-it%E2%80%99s-not-about-you/feed/8As a Sexual Abuse Survivor, Can I Only Connect to People Sexually?http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/02/27/sexual-abuse-survivor-only-connect-people-sexually/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sexual-abuse-survivor-only-connect-people-sexually
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/02/27/sexual-abuse-survivor-only-connect-people-sexually/#commentsSun, 27 Feb 2011 21:04:14 +0000Whatever it turns out your sexuality and relationships are like, whatever it turns out you want from them, they're about much, much more than your abuse.

I was sexually abused, so I was wondering will I only want to find someone who I’m going to stay with for sex?

Heather Corinna replies:

I want to first tell you a few things you should know are true.

Whatever it turns out your sexuality and relationships are like, whatever it turns out you want from them, they’re about much, much more than your abuse. Because we’ve been abused doesn’t mean either or both of those things will be all about our abuse, or that our abuse will be the biggest influence on them. What our sexuality is, what our relationships are and are like, sexual and non-sexual, are about us as a whole person, not just one part of who we are or one thing that happened to us in our lives.

You are as capable of as many different kinds of relationships as everyone else, and of having whatever kinds of relationships it is or will be that you, yourself want and choose. A healthy, happy sex life and intimate relationships — of whatever kind — which you enjoy and want are just as attainable for you as they are for people who have not been abused.

If you do not want relationships that are only about sex, if you do not want to stay in any relationship only because of sex, you don’t ever have to have those or do that.

Lots of people have things in their life history which make navigating their sexuality difficult or confusing, not just sexual abuse survivors. Sexuality is rarely easy or uncomplicated for anyone.

Some people want and choose to have relationships sometimes that are only or mostly about sex. That is not something exclusive to sexual abuse survivors: it is something some people want sometimes while others do not, including people who have not been abused and people who have been.

Lastly, perhaps most importantly, I want you to know that the person or people who abused you do not have power over you anymore. Your power is back where it belongs now, with you, in your hands. It’s yours, all yours, only to share with someone if you choose to. Your abuser or abusers didn’t take it away from you for good: they didn’t and still don’t have that ability unless you choose to give it to them now. In fact, people who abuse are making clear to us that they’re intimidated by our power, that they feel less powerful than us, which is why they try and take it from us by temporarily overpowering us. But it’s yours: they can’t and don’t own it. Only you can and do, much-more-powerful-than-them you.

I also want to make sure you know that sexual abuse isn’t sex for a victim. It can be for the person who is doing the abusing, but it’s not for the person on the other end, which is why it’s an abuse. Sex, real-deal sex, is something that we do alone or with others that’s about our unique wants, desires and our pleasure — physical and emotional — and when other people are involved, that’s about mutual, shared wants, desires and pleasure. Consensual, healthy partnered sex, unlike sexual abuse, respects everyone involved and is about people giving each other things and sharing things, not about anyone seeking to take something from someone.

I don’t know what, if any, sexual relationships — that have also been wantedly sexual for you, not just the other person — you have had so far, if any. So, I can’t know if you have yet experienced the difference between consensual, wanted and mutually pleasurable sex and sexual abuse. If you haven’t, trust me when I tell you they’re radically different. If you have, you hopefully already know that. If you have sought out sex with others and it hasn’t felt radically different than your abuse did, that’s something I’ll talk about in a little bit.

Because you have been sexually abused, will you only want relationships that are just about sex?

Probably not, just like most folks who haven’t been sexually abused won’t tend to only want those kinds of relationships through their whole lives even if they may or do want those kinds of relationships sometimes. Most people want and have a range of different relationships with different people: like family, mentors, friends, acquaintances, lovers, partners, neighbors, co-workers, people who you collaborate with on things like creative projects, sports, hobbies or community-building and relationships where some of those roles overlap.

What kind of relationships you do and don’t want or have, at any time of your life, is going to be about way more than the fact that you were abused. It’s going to be about the whole person you are and want to be — and whoever those other folks are and want to be — your whole life history, about what kinds of connections and opportunities you discover with others, about the place you’re in in your life at any given time, about the way you feel about people and yourself, your own ethics, ideals, life goals and values, about what kind of time and energy you have: about a lot of things.

Just like everyone else, you may find there are times in your life when the way you connect with someone else is only or mostly sexual, and then that you also want a relationship with them that’s only or mostly about sex. You may find there are times in your life where you want an expressly sexual relationship. Or not. You may want those things sometimes, or with some people, but not at other times, or with other people.

If at any time you want to find someone with whom to have a relationship that’s mostly or only about sex, and that’s what feels most right for both of you, that’s okay. Everyone has that right. If what you want and what feels right are relationships in which sex is only one part of a relationship, that’s okay, too. Everyone also has that right. Even if what you want and what feels right are relationships that aren’t about sex at all, even ever, that is also okay and everyone also has that right.

That said, there are some things that can come up are this when we’ve survived sexual abuse you can make yourself aware of and just keep in mind.

A lot of people present sexual abuse survivors as being more sexual than other people, or as seeking out sex-only relationships more. However, that’s often about stereotyping people, is sometimes even about victim-blaming and abuse enabling (about repeating or mirroring attitudes abusers have), and can have a lot to do with people paying much more attention to our sexual behavior than to the sexual behavior of people who have not been abused or who have, but don’t call what happened to them abuse or who didn’t tell anybody. It also has something to do with people thinking far fewer people have been sexually abused than those of us who actually have been, and with some people mistaking repeated abuses or rapes for consensual sex. I talk about all of that here if you want to read up on it in depth.

It may be you find you feel curious about experiencing sex so that you can know and experience the difference between that and abuse: if so, that’s okay. Lots of people are curious about sex and what it is for a whole host of reasons, and that reason is no less valid than any other. Looking to answer that question is also certainly understandable. It’s an important question, and while we can answer it without having or experiencing sex to some degree, we can want to tangibly explore, feel and experience that answer. It may also be that you feel scared of very emotionally intimate relationships, especially if the person or people who abused you were people you trusted. That can happen, too.

It can also happen that for anyone who has had control and power taken away from them around their bodies and sex — which is the case for anyone sexually abused, but can also be something people experience because of other things, like not being able to identify or present their gender as they feel it, having been abused in other ways, or for those who were shamed around their bodies or sexuality — that you want to seek out situations where that’s in your control. If and when you find that’s something you want to do and feels right for you, as long as the other person also gets to have control and power over their own body, that’s okay, too. That’s also one of those things we know is not at all just about sexual abuse survivors: many people, if not all people, explore power and empowerment in their sex lives.

If you’re asking this question because you have felt, so far, like sex-only relationships are the only ones you’re in, or like you can only connect with other people on a sexual level, there are some things I’d check in with yourself about. I’d also do some checking in if you’ve been having any kind of sex with people and find that sex feels the same as your abuse, or that you feel in it like you felt when you were abused.

Sometimes, when we’ve been sexually abused, especially before we’re gotten any real help with and done a lot of work on healing, we might feel like our only value is sexual, and so seek out sexual relationships when that isn’t what we really want because we figure that’s all we’re good for. One of the ways sexual abuse can impact us is to kind of hijack our sexuality some, especially for a while right after abuse happens, or to make us feel like since someone (the person or people who abused us) decided we were an object for sex that they were right. Sometimes sexual abuse can also confuse us, making it seem like the way abuse is is the way sex is or is supposed to be, especially if our abuser or abusers told us what was happening was sex, not abuse, said it was good, not bad, or told us it was what we wanted, even though it wasn’t what we wanted at all. Just know that none of that is true: those are all things someone decided or said who was not a healthy person and whose judgment you can know was clearly seriously flawed, since they abused you, something healthy people in a sound state of mind just don’t do.

If it ever feels like you’re feeling that those kinds of things are true and that your only value is sexual, like that’s the only way other people will connect with you, or any sex or sexual relationships you’re part of remind you a whole lot of your abuse, it’s usually a good idea to back it up, step away from sexual relationships for a while, and do some more work on your own healing first, without sexual relationships for a bit, and to also stick to relationships where you feel able to be a whole person and feel cared for as all of who you are, not only one part. In order to have healthy sex lives, one thing all of us need is to really value ourselves as whole people, not parts, so anytime we’re not, that’s something we want to work on and put our time and energy into, whether we feel that way because of abuse or because of something else.

There are some things you can ask yourself to check in around this if you are feeling like all you are good for or can have are sex-only relationships, or like that’s all you want, but you don’t feel right about it.Is that what you really want, for instance? It’s okay if it is (and so long as it’s also something the other people only want, too), but you want to be sure it really is so that you don’t wind up putting yourself in a position where, yet again, you feel like things are happening outside your control or which you don’t want or feel good about. Obviously, if you do want those kinds of relationships and it does feel right, you’ll want to make sure you also feel able to navigate and manage them well, as they can be pretty tricky, especially when you’re young.

If sex-only relationships are something that you feel you’d not want to actively choose, but find yourself falling into, or feel like those are the only relationships available to you, then you want to work to make different choices so that you’re not doing anything that doesn’t feel right to you and that isn’t what you want. That’s true about sexual choices just like any other kinds of choices in life. Whatever area we’re making choices in, we want to always try and think about what we really want for ourselves and what feels right, deep in our guts and in our heads, and lead with that. If something doesn’t feel right or makes us feel bad about ourselves, it’s usually because it isn’t right for us and isn’t good for us. Remember that we’re not always going to have the opportunity to have the kinds of relationships we really want at a given time, that’s just life, and that when our only options are not what we want, having no relationship is better than being in something we don’t want, like or feel good in.

I’d strongly suggest that if you’ve not yet gotten any good, ongoing help healing from your abuse that you seek that out.

Healing is a lifelong process, and while it usually gets easier over time, it’s pretty much always hard, if not impossible, without help and support. It also often won’t get easier as quickly if we try and go it alone. We can lean on that help and support to work things out like this, or to give us a hand if and when we find that we’re winding up in things or doing things we don’t think we really want or which don’t leave us feeling good.

What that help and support is isn’t always the same thing for everyone. Counseling from someone trained to help trauma survivors is an excellent option. So are support groups where you can listen and talk to other survivors, reading other survivor’s stories or using books or workbooks to help yourself, doing creative work to heal, like using art or writing as therapy, some kinds of bodywork, like therapeutic massage or bodyworking, like getting involved in a kind of physical activity that can hep us get back in touch with our own bodies and help us feel strong and whole in them, like dance, or something we can learn for self-defense like a martial art. You can use any combination of those kinds of things, and more, to facilitate and help you heal, and I’d suggest picking at least one or two.

I want to also remind you that you’re still only in your mid-teens, which makes you very young in the big picture of your whole life and your whole sexual life. Not knowing what you want or might want sexually typical just because of your age and in a lot of ways, is a given at this time in your life, with or without a history of abuse. So, you might also just want to try and accept that since you can’t predict the future, there’s no way of knowing right now what kinds of relationships you’ll want or have throughout your life. That’s something that you, like anyone else, will just feel out, experience and figure out as you go. But what you can know is that all of that is going to be up to you, and whatever it is you find that you really want and feel good about is going to be okay.

I’m going to leave you with a bunch of links to look at, but I’d also like to suggest a couple books I think you might find helpful. Those are, It Happened to Me: A Teen’s Guide to Overcoming Sexual Abuse by William Lee Carter, How Long Does It Hurt: A Guide to Recovering from Incest and Sexual Abuse for Teenagers, Their Friends, and Their Families by Cynthia L. Mather and The Me Nobody Knows: A Guide for Teen Survivors by Barbara Bean.

I also want to make sure to link you up to our message boards, where you’re welcome to talk more with me if you like, any of our volunteers, and where you can also talk to other survivors of abuse and find great peer support. It’s so easy to feel all alone in this, but you’re not alone, and you don’t have to be. You also don’t have to be silent or go without talking about your abuse or your process in healing. Pandora’s Project is another excellent online resource where you can get more information and talk with fellow survivors.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/02/27/sexual-abuse-survivor-only-connect-people-sexually/feed/1Scott Brown, Sexual Abuse and Women’s Rights: How Will His Experiences Inform His Votes?http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/02/17/scott-brown-sexual-abuse-womens-rights-will-experiences-inform-votes/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=scott-brown-sexual-abuse-womens-rights-will-experiences-inform-votes
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/02/17/scott-brown-sexual-abuse-womens-rights-will-experiences-inform-votes/#commentsThu, 17 Feb 2011 09:27:17 +0000Details are still emerging regarding Scott Brown's history of sexual and emotional abuse. But it's worth asking: will he now lead a fight against GOP/Tea Party efforts to eliminate programs to assist victims and GOP efforts to "redefine rape?"

]]>This week, Senator Scott Brown revealed, in anticipation of the release of his forthcoming memoir, that he was sexually and emotionally abused as a child. Sexual and emotional abuse of either children or adults is horrific and, unfortunately, widespread.

In this moment, I am not even going to attempt to address the issue in its complexity. I not only believe what Senator Brown says, I also feel for him and, on one level, admire him for talking about his experiences and, hopefully, making it easier for other victims to seek help and to talk without shame about being abused, as well as for us as a society to talk more frankly both about violence prevention as well as compassionate, effective, and timely treatment for survivors of abuse. More will, I am sure, be said here about Brown’s memoirs and experiences in the coming days.

What I want to do now is ask some questions.

First, and as a prelude to others: What did or does Brown’s experience teach him about violence and abuse, about victims, and about rights?

For example, as a survivor of sexual and emotional abuse, one would think that Brown would have first-hand and deep sympathy for other survivors of violence, including rape and sexual abuse of women. Why then did Brown, as a candidate in Massachusetts, work to make it harder for rape victims to get access to emergency contraception?

In 2005, Brown, a Massachusetts state senator, proposed an amendment to an emergency contraception bill that would have allowed doctors or nurses who didn’t like EC to refuse treatment to rape victims. Far from irrelevant, the amendment was shocking then and is shocking now.

Reeves quotes an interview with Brown by Megan Carpentier:

Megan Carpentier takes Brown to task brilliantly on Air America, responding, in particular, to his claim that the right to withhold EC is “not about the victim.” In 2005, Brown defended his amendment as follows:

“Through our conversations, I’ve heard, ‘what if somebody has a sincerely held religious conviction about dispensing the emergency contraception medication? What about their rights? How do we address those?’ ’’ Brown said on the Senate floor, according to a State House News Service transcript.

Brown added that a rape victim would be referred to another facility at no additional cost. “It’s not about the victim.”

It is, indeed, about the victim. Could you possibly even fathom one of the very sympathetic interviewers on ABC, CNN, The Today Show or some other venue turning to Brown and suggesting, “but this was not about you, right?”

“Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, but I think we need to do more to reduce the amount of abortions,” he stated. “And the difference between me and maybe others is that I’m very – I’m against partial-birth abortions. I’m against federal funding of abortions. And I believe in a strong parental consent notification law.”

Problems: One, no such thing as partial birth abortions, so if he is pro-choice he has not examined the evidence. But more salient is this: His stance on “strong parental consent.”Wow. Would he have asked his abusers to take him to the police or the social services agency so he could report them? No? Well, the fact is that not only don’t parental consent laws not work, they are most egregiously detrimental to the very teens most likely to have been in Brown’s position: young girls who live in abusive family situations, or who may even be victims of incest, and who fear telling their parents what they need, often for fear of violence from their families.

These laws are the construct of a movement that is unconcerned with the emotional and physical well-being of teens in difficult situations or with their futures. They are concerned with putting up roadblocks to access for teens to evidence-based, compassionate reproductive and sexual health care. They are concerned with funding “crisis-pregnancy centers.” These do not provide compassionate care to victims of violence, rape or other abuse.

There is much else to explore here.

But I have other questions:

Will Brown’s veracity be challenged by the tidal wave of “violence- and rape-denialists” that descend on every woman who publicly discusses abuse? For the record, I do not wish this on him. AT ALL. I do, however, think it will be interesting to see what level of compassion from the usual suspects Brown garners in his story than has been accorded so far to say, Lara Logan? And how will revelations by a “pin-up” macho male senator affect the discussion around emotional abuse of women, which is regularly dismissed as being a problem by violence-denialists and the far right?

How will Brown’s experiences inform his role as a lawmaker?

Will he agree to the drastic cuts being made by his party to shelters, public health programs and other social services that actually help victims of violence and those in need of health services?

Does he agree with the effort in the House to “redefine rape?” And if not, why has he not spoken out about this?

What role can Scott Brown play in bringing reality to debates and to policies that most heavily affect women, and even more dramatically affect low-income women and their vulnerable children?

In short, does Brown now understand it is in fact about the victim?

There are several roads Brown could take. I am interested to see where he turns.

Update, correction, and clarification: An error in this article was corrected at 10:11 p.m., Friday December 17th. The original version of the article stated that the vote count in the bill was 244 – 166. The correct tally is 241 – 166. To clarify, that is 241 votes in favor of the bill and 166 votes against. The bill required a two-thirds majority to pass. According to a statement by Congresswoman Betty McCollum, 229 Democrats voted for this bill as well as 12 Republicans.

In an act that Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said “brought shame to Capitol Hill” last night, the House Republican leadership banded together at the last minute, and on purely specious grounds, to defeat a piece of legislation six years in the making aimed at preventing child marriage worldwide. The bill was supported by a wide-ranging coalition of groups including the International Women’s Health Coalition and CARE-USA.

An estimated 60 million girls in developing countries now ages 20 to 24 were married before they reached the age of 18. The Population Council estimates that the number will increase by 100 million over the next decade if current trends continue.

Child marriage, noted Durbin, is often carried out through force or coercion.

It deprives young girls – and sometimes boys – of their dignity and human rights. In some countries, it is not uncommon for girls as young as seven or eight years old to be married. These young victims are robbed of their childhoods. In addition to denying tens of millions of women and girls their dignity, child marriage also endangers their health. Marriage at an early age puts girls at greater risk of dying as a result of childbirth. Pregnancy and childbirth complications are the leading cause of death for women 15 to 19 years old in developing countries. Their children also face higher mortality rates.

Ending child marriage is an important human rights goal in and of itself. It also is one of the key factors in reducing the spread of HIV and AIDS, reducing maternal and infant deaths, improving family health, and encouraging economic development. In the words of Congresswoman Betty McCollum (D-MN):

No girl who is 11, 12, 13 and 14 should be forced to marry a man years or decades older. Yet, millions of young girls in the world’s poorest countries are forced into marriage every year – sold and traded like a farm animal, raped by their husbands, and forced into lives of servitude and poverty.

With the goal of eliminating this practice worldwide, Senator Durbin joined with Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) to introduce the International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act, requiring the U.S. government to develop an integrated, strategic approach to combating child marriage by ensuring more effective us of existing resources. The bill also seeks to promote the educational, health, economic, social, and legal empowerment of women and girls.

As we reported earlier this week, the bill, S. 987, passed unanimously in the Senate (all 100 Republicans and Democrats), and was sent on to the House yesterday for final passage.

And as soon as it landed there, the Republican leadership set out to defeat it.

First, just after noon yesterday, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to House Republicans forcefully urging them “to oppose the Senate bill, S. 987, the “International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act of 2010,” when it comes up for a vote today in its current version.” (See below for the full text).

This letter then went on to argue–without merit–that the bill would cost $108 million and urged votes for a “new” alternative bill crafted by Ros-Lehtinen.

In fact, S. 987 is an authorizing bill and contains no new funding. Rather, the bill was purposefully crafted to make the most effective use of existing U.S. international assistance by ensuring effective coordination among various development efforts. As I wrote the other day, the bill:

seeks to ensure that our policies and funding are comprehensive, coordinated, and have the maximum effectiveness in ending a serious violation of human rights while promoting development goals on which we have labored for decades.

Later in the day, at 6:53 pm just before the vote was to be held, Eric Cantor’s office sent out a “whip alert” to Legislative Directors of Republican offices, which now also contended that they should vote against the bill based on “pro-life” concerns.

What “pro-life” concerns? I find it literally impossible to say, since for one thing the bill itself seeks to protect and promote the life, health and survival of girls who are being married as young as age eight, and for another thing the bill, in that it seeks to prevent child marriage in the first place did not address the needs of already-married girls and young women who for obvious reasons otherwise need access to reproductive health care.

Congressman LaTourette (R-OH) admonished his party’s leadership for voting down a perfectly reasonable bill that could have helped girls achieve a future they want.

Let me repeat: This bill seeks to prevent children from being married and by extension from forcing young girls into sexual relations in a custom that is nothing but a blatant abuse of human rights. I would think if you called yourself “prolife” you might well be interested in preventing the marriage of a child bride such as the one pictured above as part of the slideshow.

But in their “abortion under every bed” mindset, Cantor and Ros-Lehtinen instructed their colleagues to vote against the bill because:

There are also concerns that funding will be directed to NGOs that promote and perform abortion and efforts to combat child marriage could be usurped as a way to overturn pro-life laws.

In reponse to the blatant lies and misrepresentation of this bill in the letter circulated by the House Republican leadership, Congresswoman McCollum sent her own Dear Colleague, stating:

S. 987 passed the U.S. Senate unanimously and will be voted on today on the House floor.

The choice on S. 987 is not difficult or controversial.

The choice is between supporting a U.S. strategy to protect young girls from abuse, rape, and forced servitude ORopposing S. 987 while millions of children continue to be molested and enslaved.

S. 987 will establish a strategy and interventions to prevent child marriage and protect girls. It authorizes the use of existing State Department resources – there is no new spending authorized ($ZERO).

Opposing S. 987 will send the message that the world’s only superpower will not make the effort to stop the violent abuse, rape, and slavery of millions of little girls.

Protect the lives and futures of millions of girls and stop their abusers – I urge all my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, to vote to pass S. 987.

But this was to no avail, as House Republicans fell into line and voted against the bill, defeating it 241 to 166.

“The action,” stated Durbin:

on the House floor stopping the Child Marriage bill tonight will endanger the lives of millions of women and girls around the world. These young girls, enslaved in marriage, will be brutalized and many will die when their young bodies are torn apart while giving birth. Those who voted to continue this barbaric practice brought shame to Capitol Hill.

I can only conclude from this and other actions of the Republican party and the so-called pro-life movement that indeed the lives of women and girls mean little to nothing. Otherwise, how could anyone advocate for defeat of a bill that would prevent children younger than my own 14-year-old from being forced into marriage, rape, and childbirth before she could even finish primary school.

It is digusting. These people clearly have no shame.

Next time you see John Boehner cry, it will clearly not be for the plight of the young girls being forced into marriage.

UPDATE: 10:37 pm, December 17, 2010: In the aftermath of the bill’s defeat, Congresswoman McCollum said in a statement:

Child marriage is a global challenge that knows no politics. Every day, it brutally destroys millions of young girls’ lives. If nothing is done, this barbaric practice will force millions more girls into a life of slavery, sex abuse, domestic violence, and servitude.

Senate Democrats and Republicans didn’t play partisan politics in this vote; they unanimously recognized that the United States can and should become a leader in the fight against child marriage. Had this legislation contained abortion provisions or authorized new spending, it never would have unanimously passed the Senate.

I thank the 229 Democrats who voted for this bill as well as the 12 Republicans. I am especially grateful for Senators Durbin, Brownback, Kerry, Lugar, and Snowe who worked to get this bipartisan agreement passed.

The International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act failed last night not because of the issue, but because a handful of Republicans chose partisan politics over the basic human rights of young girls. I am truly disappointed in this result, but I’m not giving up on these children.

DEAR COLLEAGUE FROM ROS-LEHTINEN:

Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2010 12:29 PMSubject: RL dear colleague

Congress of the United StatesWashington, DC 20515December 16, 2010

VOTE “NO” on $108 Million S. 987Support $1 Million GOP Alternative

Dear Republican Colleague,I urge you to oppose the Senate bill, S. 987, the “International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act of 2010,” when it comes up for a vote today in its current version.·S. 987 would authorize $108 Million over 5 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.·S. 987 authorizes this assistance without having at hand a clear accounting of existing U.S. efforts for the prevention of child marriage.According to the Congressional Research Service, there is no available, confirmed figure on how much taxpayer funding is already being used to fight child marriage in developing countries. (For example, in Ethiopia USAID has worked to reduce child marriage by raising awareness of such a harmful practice among religious and political leaders, and has further partnered to establish girls’ advisory committees to prevent child marriage and encourage school attendance of girls; in India, USAID co-funds programs for in-school counseling that includes instructions on the benefits of delaying marriage until the legal age; in Yemen, USAID is working with local organizations to improve community knowledge of the social and health consequences of child marriage, while strengthening community support to keep girls in school. Yet, no actual assistance figures exist for such programs.) We should not authorize more funding without first assessing what we are now spending and how we might address any deficiencies in our current programs and improve our efforts.·By contrast, H.R. 6521, the GOP alternative that I have introduced would result in no more than $1 Million in potential costs,while making it clear thatchild marriage is a violation of human rights and that its prevention should be a goal of US foreign policy; requiring the creation of a multi-year strategy; requiring a comprehensive assessment of what the United States is already doing and funding in the effort to fight child marriage; and requiring that the practice of child marriage in other countries be reported each year as part of the annual Human Rights Report.

Again, I urge aNO vote on S. 987 when it is brought up for consideration. To co-sponsor H.R. 6521, please contact Christina Jenckes at christina.jenckes@mail.house.gov or x68467.Sincerely,

Leadership and Ranking Member Ros-Lehtinen OPPOSE passage of S.987, the International Child Marriage bill, because of cost and pro-life concerns. Please see below for their individual vote positions. We will vote on this in the upcoming vote series.

Leader Boehner: No
Whip Cantor: No
Ranking Member Ros-Lehtinen: No

S. 987 authorizes $108 million over 5 years without sufficient oversight of the taxpayers’ money. According to the Congressional Research Service, there is no available, confirmed figure on how much taxpayer funding is already being used to fight child marriage in developing countries and this bill does not address that issue.

In contrast, Ranking Member Ros-Lehtinen has introduced H.R. 6521, which would result in no more than $1 million in potential costs, while making it clear that child marriage is a violation of human rights and that its prevention should be a goal of US foreign policy; requiring the creation of a multi-year strategy; requiring a comprehensive assessment of what the United States is already doing and funding in the effort to fight child marriage; and requiring that the practice of child marriage in other countries be reported each year as part of the annual Human Rights Report.

There are also concerns that funding will be directed to NGOs that promote and perform abortion and efforts to combat child marriage could be usurped as a way to overturn pro-life laws.